In Wausau, Hmong at another crossroads

After 2 decades of struggling to adapt in Wisconsin, thousands of Asian immigrants' children face a better future--and a challenge to honor the past

June 16, 2003|By Tim Jones, Tribune national correspondent.

WAUSAU, Wis. — Zong Her has lived a life of jarring adjustments. Twenty-four years ago he fled the communists in his native Laos, crossed the Mekong River by canoe to a refugee camp in neighboring Thailand, and later traveled 8,300 miles to the north woods of Wisconsin where he confronted a hostile reception and a perpetually challenging language.

"The children think of it as just a story. To them it's not real. It's a movie," Her said from behind the counter of his grocery store west of downtown Wausau.

This is part of the price that Her, 40, and thousands of other Hmong refugees who settled here in the past two decades have paid to escape the postwar chaos of Southeast Asia.

In Wausau, the Hmong (pronounced mung) are rooted in a strange land, clinging to their fragile language and facing uncertain prospects as their children adapt to the ways, and the words, of America.

After dramatically altering the ethnic composition of Wausau, which in 1980 was characterized as one of the whitest cities in the U.S., the Hmong are at a crossroads in this city of 38,000 people. Thanks to the churches and individuals who sponsored them, the Hmong make up nearly 12 percent of the population and are the city's dominant minority. Their children account for nearly 25 percent of public school enrollment.

Yet attainment of the American Dream has been elusive.

The Hmong commercial presence here is faint, limited to a handful of Hmong-owned grocery stores, a couple of restaurants and a few small businesses. The overwhelming majority of Hmong adults--90 to 95 percent--work in low-wage factory jobs. As the first generation of U.S.-born Hmong prepare to graduate from high school and college, there is growing concern they will take their skills--and the Hmong community's future--elsewhere, leaving a legacy of Wausau as a temporary refugee shelter.

Struggling with new culture

Some of the Hmong youths have struggled with the adjustment to the new culture. Wausau-area police have investigated gang activity, including several shootings--none fatal--last summer. The bigger concern, though, is the lack of job opportunities.

"The mom-and-dad generation does not have the knowledge to open a store," said Ya Yang the only Hmong on Wausau's 12-member City Council. "The biggest obstacle we face is getting the young people to come back. Instead they will go to Milwaukee or Chicago or the Twin Cities. There is little to draw them back here."

That worry applies to Yang's 18-year-old daughter, Zoua, who was awarded a four-year academic scholarship to the University of Wisconsin-Madison. Zoua Yang, who plans to study biology, said she's not sure what she will do. Her father said her return is "questionable."

These worries resemble those of other immigrants who struggle to preserve their language and culture in the U.S. But where Spanish, Chinese and many European immigrants often have television, radio, newspapers and magazines to reinforce their language and culture, Hmong refugees have little to compete with the dominance of English and American culture. The Hmong language has a spoken history, and it was not written down until the mid-20th Century.

"More and more young people are not speaking the language because there is not the system to teach it, like you would with Spanish. It's very different," said Bo Thao, executive director of the Hmong National Development Corp., a Washington-based advocacy group.

"And as young people get educated they are then more likely to move out of the areas where their parents settled because of the job market," Thao said. "We're seeing that happen."

The Hmong people, an ethnic Chinese group that fought alongside American forces during the Vietnam War, fled their homes in Laos and political persecution after the U.S. pulled out of Vietnam in 1975. American churches and families began sponsoring these refugees and paid for the Hmong to settle in the United States. About 200,000 Hmong, who came from a largely agrarian culture, live in the U.S., mostly in Wisconsin, Minnesota and California.

Minnesota's Twin Cities have the largest concentrated Hmong population--about 60,000--but it was Wausau, the Chippewa word for "faraway place," that experienced some of the greatest social upheaval from the Hmong arrival.

It didn't take long for a well-intentioned humanitarian gesture to spin out of control, causing a political backlash. Southeast Asian enrollment in the city school district was 160 in 1981. Ten years later it reached 1,010. By 1996 it topped 2,000 and peaked in 1998 at 2,214. Some schools were dominated by Hmong, and in some classes few students spoke English.

Because most Hmong lacked job or language skills to find work, the welfare rate in the Hmong community topped 80 percent. Costs to educate Hmong children and provide social services to the newcomers soared.